Is it possible to use current sciencetific research on learning techniques to quickly learn how to draw people, animals, and objects from memory or imagination?
I've just started compiling my notes and setting up my curriculum. I'll add more updates and how-to instructions as time goes on.
Welcome to the site! Here I plan on sharing what I've learned about fast skill acquisition. I'll be using drawing as the use case here, but the principles should transfer to many other skills.
Drawing, as you probably know, is one of the more difficult to learn skills. Especially when dealing with the human body. Difficult enough, that most people believe it is a talent or genetic trait. Not something that can be learned by spending a few hours practicing each day.
My goal is to see if this skill will yield to techniques and protocols that have been discovered by learning researchers over the last few decades. I'll share things that have worked for me here on this site.
Under the "Progress" section, I'll show my current best attempts. Whenever you try to learn a new skill, it helps to have timely feedback and a record of where you started. So, there, you'll see all of my rough beginnings and current best attempts.
In the "Drawing Research" section, I'll have notes, articles, and links to resources that can help pull together the methods I'll be relying on.
Currently, this site will focus on my attempts to learn contructive drawing. Constructive drawing differs from "sight-size" drawing method taught by many ateliers, where students focus on creating life-like representations of objects infront of them (or from a photograph.)
In constructive drawing, we start with the primative forms (cube, cyllinder, sphere, and cone) and manipulate them to create the things we want. This is the method used in sequential art, design, and other fields that artists need to create figures and environments in perspective without references that exactly match the subject.
I'll also research how to quickly memorize measurement and proportion systems for human and animal anatomy. Examples of systems are the Reilly Method and Loomis Method. The reason is to be able to draw those things from imagination (the last is the Holy Grail for even established professionals, I doubt that I'll even come close to that level in my lifetime.)So, who am I? I'm R.A. Brown, a guy in his late thirties who has had an interest in drawing since childhood.
However, when I was young, I didn't have access to all of the great resources available these days. In the Nineties and 00s, we had to rely on bookstores and libraries to find good learning resources. Drawing, design, and illustration DVDs were around, but they usually sold for around $60.00 each. It was difficult to affordably learn classical draftsmanship skills for comics and illustration, say nothing of animation (at least outside of the major metros or the big de$ign $chools.)
Now, since the advent of YouTube and social media, good learning opportunities are everywhere. Including access to some of the best artists in the industry. Need to study the old masters? Pull up Pinterest and you're done. Need to find pros who are at the top of their fields? Check out ArtStation and you're done.
Every day, I see self-taught teenagers creating their own animated shorts on YouTube and garnering tens of thousands of viewers and Likes, something impossible to achieve 20 years ago. At least without heavy-hitting connections in the TV and film industries.
So, although I'm very late to the party, it's my goal to restart my journey and learn things that I gave up on years ago. I don't intend on becoming skilled enough to compete for a job in the Industry or land on the front page of ArtStation, but if I can create things to share online that entertain others, then that is good enough for me.